Identity Crisis(10)

There was no denying the tight squirm of pleasure she felt below her belly as she thought about him grabbing her around the waist and pulling her off the end of the dock into the lake with him. What an asshole, she thought. And yet he was a cheeky asshole with a great body, one the wet summer shorts and polo shirt revealed quite nicely. Didn’t make him any less of an asshole, though. How did he get to be brothers with someone as amazing as Ellison Thorne? More significantly, how had Ellis kept from murdering him when they were kids? She was pretty sure she would have if he’d been her brother.

She returned her attention to her online attempts to connect with Tess Delaney. The woman had covered her tracks better than anyone she’d ever known – even better than she had. Not one of her substantial connections seemed to know anything about the woman or how to get in touch with her people. Still, the harder it was to find out what she needed to know, the deeper she dug. K. Ryde never gave up. She just hoped some lesser being didn’t get Tess Delaney’s attention before she did. It would be a pity if the woman ended up with less than the best.

It was long after midnight at the end of her third week of searching when she finally found what she was looking for, or rather, it found her. It was an email from the Bachman Agency, a PR firm Kendra had quite a bit of contact with when she was in the business. Most often they’d been competitors, though it had been friendly competition for the most part, and on occasion they’d actually helped each other out. The email was sent to K. Ryde personally. Not many people knew that address. In fact, it was pretty much an inactive account now, and yet there it was, a message from Donald P. Bachman.

Dear Mr. Ryde,

Everyone always assumed K. Ryde was a man.

I’m emailing on behalf of Ms. Tess Delaney, who would like to employ a PR person for a special project, one of a sensitive nature. Ms. Delaney requires a woman in her early to mid-30s, one comfortable with making public appearances and speaking in public, should the need arise. Ms. Delaney is looking for someone who can represent her publically and discreetly. She would need this person as soon as possible. Please send résumés on to me or contact me personally.

Sincerely yours,

Donald P. Bachman

Did she actually whoop out loud? She looked around the room to make sure no one had heard her, which was totally ridiculous, since she was all alone. She was exactly what Tess Delaney needed. Though the woman didn’t know it yet, Kendra was totally certain of it. With a few short email exchanges, Kendra made sure that Donald P. Bachman knew it as well. Just before she shut down for the night she gave Mr. Bachman a call, or rather, Kay Lake gave him a call, Kay Lake with her newly created email address, Facebook page and Twitter account. Kay Lake who had studied PR at university as well as acting. Kay Lake who until just a few hours ago didn’t exist. If the Bachman Agency were desperate enough to email her old K. Ryde account, then they would find Kay Lake to be exactly what they were looking for. And by the time she ended their conversation, she had Don Bachman eating out of her hand. She was going to work for Tess Delaney. She was as sure of it as she was her own name.

She shut down her laptop and headed off to bed. In her mind’s eye, she could imagine rubbing Garrett Thorne’s nose in just how wrong he was about her suitability to represent Tess Delaney. As she brushed her teeth, making her usual faces in front of the bathroom mirror, she berated herself for even considering Garrett’s opinion. The Bachman Agency would take her at her word no matter what Garrett Thorne thought. After all, she was recommended to them by K. Ryde. If she said she could get the job done, then for all practical purposes, they could count it already done. The red Shelby Mustang parked safely in the underground car park of her apartment complex was evidence of that.

She stripped out of her yoga bottoms and her tank top and slid naked into the bed. As the sheets grazed the tips of her nipples and the cool cotton embraced her, the memory of Garrett Thorne wrapping his arms around her and pulling her into the lake on top of him made her feel wet in places that had nothing to do with lake water, places that had been tetchy since they’d made their big splash at Harris’s bar-B-Q. She couldn’t say she didn’t like the feeling. But, God, did it really have to be Garrett Thorne who made her wet? Tess Delaney would not have palmed her heroines off on the unemployed bad boy little brother of the hot shot of the business world, she was sure of it. That was not a story the woman would write. Surely Tess would give the brilliant young PR exec a better match than that.

Damn it, listen to her. Tess Delaney wrote romance novels, for fuck sake! She didn’t write real life because nobody wanted to read about real life. The truth was that if you could give up the stupid fantasies about happy ever after and hearts and flowers, you could have sex. Sex was easy, sex was abundant. You simply had to remember that it was just that. There were no strings and there were no expectations. That way no one got hurt and everyone knew up front what the rules were. She always made certain of that, and she always made certain the rules were her own. It had worked for her all these years. It had kept her satisfied and it had kept her heart safe. And she had always been a firm believer that if you let your heart get broken, well, at the end of the day, you had no one to blame but yourself. No one but yourself.